Yesterday was...

Fathers' Day!

It was also the day Adur East Lions staged their donkey derby and the day of the annual London to Brighton cycle ride in aid of the British Heart Foundation. I am told that 27,000 riders took part yesterday in the 54-mile ride. This causes a bit of a problem along the route and effectively cuts Brighton in two as it can be difficult to get from one side of the route to the other. Stanmer is out for me as the road is closed to traffic for the day. But to get back to Fathers' Day.

This was never celebrated in our house when I was a father to young children and I certainly never made any effort as a child myself to mark the day in any way for my own father. That was probably because in those days fathers' day had not yet been introduced to the country. We tend to think of it as a day conjured up by the American greetings card industry and subsequently imported to England. Unlike Mothers' Day - or Mothering Sunday as it should properly be called.

Tradition has it that Mothering Sunday was the one day of the year when female domestic servants were allowed the whole day off so that they could travel back to their home villages to visit their mothers. Whether or not that is true I haven't the faintest idea but it has always seemed a nice little idea to me.